Monday, August 22, 2016

SPACEMAN...

Bill Lee
wasn’t so strange.

He liked
drugs. He listened to rock music. Classical, too. He dabbled in meditation and
yoga. At heart, though, he was a baseball player, like any other baseball
player. Last I heard, he was living in Maine, teaching the fundamentals of the
game to kids.

During
his heyday he picked up a nickname – “Spaceman” – because jocks and
sportswriters are a decidedly square lot, as sheltered and unhip as Sunday
school teachers. A player who gets high, speaks his mind, and defies the front
office, as Lee did periodically, must be somewhat shocking to those around him, something
short of Charles Manson. I’m not an expert on Bill Lee, but he’s always appeared
to be a decent chap. Sure, he was yoked to an anti-establishment stance that
was as much a reflection of the times as a personality trait, but he could win
17 or 18 games throwing nothing but junk. Plus, he tried like hell to have
integrity. There were other players in Lee’s day who spoke their minds and
argued with management, but as we see in Brett Rapkin’sSpaceman, Lee seemed to care more
than the others. At his worst, he was like some college freshman who reads Siddhartha and feels determined to share
its meaning with the world. At his best, he was Randall McMurphy in
cleats.

Throughout
Spaceman, Lee comes up against
various Nurse Ratcheds in the guise of coaches. All Lee has to do is quote
Buckminster Fuller to send a Montreal Expos coach into a frothing rage. The powers that be
don’t even like his style on the mound, what one coach derides as “a grab-bag
of monkeyshit pitches.” The method here is pure 1970s misunderstood rebel-hero,
sprinkled with touches of Slapshot, North
Dallas Forty, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and even Bound For Glory. When Lee rhapsodizes
late in the movie that he plans to roam the country, discovering baseball in
its purest form (“Baseball, softball, wiffle ball, cricket! Pay me in money,
pay me in lager, or don’t pay me!”) he sounds suspiciously like Tom Joad telling
his ma goodbye before he hits the highway.

Early on
we’re told in big bright letters, Most of
This Really Happened…which is fair enough. The best baseball stories are a
mix of truth and folklore, but was Lee really so unconcerned about hygiene?
“Your farts are an improvement on the B.O.,” says a friend at one point. Not
surprisingly, his marriage crumbled at the same time as his career, so we get
the obligatory scenes of Lee dealing with a divorce lawyer - he strips down to his briefs in the middle of the guy's office - and pleading with
his wife over the phone. These bits feel added on, in case a few females stumble
onto the movie by accident. Much more stirring is the footage that plays over the final
credits, clips of the real Bill Lee, now a bearish man in his late 60s, still
participating in semi-pro games. Watching Lee lumber around the bases is all the proof we need that his love of marijuana was more than
matched by his love of competition.

As Lee,
Josh Duhamel spends half the movie in a bathrobe, growling like Nick Nolte. He
seems all wrong at first. He's too redneck, which wasn't Lee's vibe at all. By the movie’s middle, though, Duhamel settles into
a nice mix of humor and anger. Duhamel also served as one of the movie’s
producers, which makes sense. An actor
would certainly nurse a project like this one, because it gives him a chance to
“sink his teeth” into the role. Indeed, there are moments when Duhamel overdoes
it, but he’s also quite real at times, quite believable as a fading athlete
raging against the dying of the light. I especially loved a scene where Lee is
pulled over by Canadian Mounties and has to charm his way across the border.
The look on his face is priceless when he realizes they’re letting him back
into Canada. It tells us more about Lee than any number of scenes where he
snorts cocaine or preaches about freedom, or acts as a magnet for period
clutter, everything from red suspenders to his collection of jaunty caps, to the
green Volkswagen bus that has dangling from its rearview mirror a Native
American dream catcher. It's an odd image for a movie where dreams can’t be caught, but have to dance like a knuckleball just to avoid being crushed.

About Me

I write for various magazines, including the great CINEMA RETRO, and the Film Noir Foundation's official magazine, Noir City. Check them out if you love movies.

I currently serve as the editorial consultant for thefilmdetective.tv, a movie streaming service that does everything from restoring old films to selling a vast collection of DVDs. Download our classic movie app!

Along with movie and arts coverage, I've written about boxing for The Ring, and ESPN.com; I've written true crime stories for the short-lived HUB; and I occasionally publish historical tales in Wild West magazine. I've also written for a bunch of newspapers in the Boston area.

THIS DAZZLING TIME is where you'll find a bit of everything. I appreciate having your attention for a moment or two.